Ballmer thought Office was an advantage for Surface. Not very many agreed with him, which is what the market has shown. Office on the iPad is the right move, and really has been for years. Even from a business standpoint, revenue for the software on someone else's hardware is better than no revenue for software on your own hardware because no one wants to buy it.

Regarding Office no longer being an advantage for Microsoft's tablet strategy: Was it really the advantage Microsoft thought it was? If so, why didn't the Surface sell if iPad owners are suddenly crazy about Office for iPad? If Office for iPad has really been sitting on the shelf to give an advantage to the Surface, where's the touch-first version of Office for the Surface? Wouldn't it make sense to feverishly work on that while the iOS version is on the shelf and then release them together? Of course the Surface version would debut with printing (even if the touch version had to launch a COM call to desktop Office to do the printing -- although this would be absurdly silly!) giving another temporary advantage over the iPad. (NOTE: I'm using Surface as a synonym for the Windows Modern UI which is a mouthful...)

Bottom line: Things just don't add up. To me, Microsoft is a puzzle. I read that MS spends more on R&D than most or all other companies. How is this money being spent? I read that Apple and Google spend less but we're always reading about new ideas brewing at Google and, to a lesser extent, Apple. Where's the buzz around the billions Microsoft spends on R&D? I know folks lay a lot of blame on Balmer but is it possible that the most successful software company in the world was run for years by someone who repeatedly made such poor decisions?

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.